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9-403-131
REV: MARCH 30, 2004
SCOTT SNOOK
JEFFREY T. POLZER
The Army Crew Team
It was nearing the end of the crew season in May 2002, and Colonel Stas Preczewski, the coach of
the Army Crew team for the United States Military Academy at West Point, had just spent the last
three weeks in utter frustration. He faced a situation he had never seen before in the nine years he
had coached the sport: the Junior Varsity (JV) crew boat frequently beat the Varsity (V) boat during
practice and in some races. This was not supposed to happen. Coach Preczewski (or Coach P.) had
selected the members of the Varsity boat after a long series of objective tests measuring their speed,
strength, and coordination—all of which demonstrated that they were the top eight rowers on his
team. So how did the Junior Varsity boat—consisting of the bottom eight rowers on his team—
frequently beat the Varsity boat?
Over the course of the season, Coach P. had made many attempts to gather information that
would help him understand and resolve this unusual situation. So far, however, nothing had
worked. Now it was just one week before the culmination of the season, the National championship
race with over one hundred schools competing, and Coach P. deliberated over several options. The
most radical action would be to acknowledge that the Junior Varsity team was better than the Varsity
team, and simply promote the whole JV team to the Varsity boat for this race. A second option was
to switch a small number of individual members of the two boats. Alternatively, Coach P. could keep
the current team members in each boat, but try to intervene to improve the performance of the
Varsity team—but how?
Crew Background
Crews rowed lightweight boats, or “shells,” that were up to 60 feet long, yet very narrow. In
“sweep” boats, each rower propelled a single oar through the water using his or her legs, back, and
arms. In addition to the rowers, a “coxswain” was perched in the back of the boat to steer the rudder,
coach, motivate, and set the race strategy for the crew. Crews competed as pairs, fours, and eightoared units of rowers. Rowers typically considered the eight-person boats, or “Eights,” to be the
prize crew in which to earn a “seat” berthing. These 8-oared shells had seats numbered from the 1seat (or “bow” seat) through the 8-seat (or “stroke” seat). (See Exhibit 1 for a description of the
placement of rowers in a crew boat.) The “stroke” set the pace in strokes per minute for the crew,
and advised the coxswain during practice and races (when he or she could find the breath to do so!).
By all accounts, rowing was an exhausting activity. In fact, physiologists who studied the sport
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Professors Scott Snook and Jeffrey T. Polzer prepared this case with the assistance of Senior Researcher Hillary Anger Elfenbein. HBS cases are
developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of
effective or ineffective management.
Copyright © 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685,
write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School.
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The Army Crew Team
maintained that rowing a 2000-meter race was comparable to playing two back-to-back basketball
games.1
Rowing held the distinction of being the first intercollegiate sport in the United States, beginning
in 1852 with a race between Harvard and Yale.2 The modern version of intercollegiate crew was a
year-round sport that began when students returned to campus in August and ended after
graduation in early June. The fall racing season consisted of so-called “Head” races that were
typically 3.5 miles long (e.g., the “Head of the Charles” race in Boston). These races consisted of 20 to
60 crews racing their rowing shells down winding courses against a clock. After all the crews had
completed the course, they were ranked according to their times to determine the winner. Although
winning was important, the fall season was generally devoted to staging tryouts, training novices,
and improving crew members’ rowing technique.
When the fall season ended in early November, crew members transitioned into the indoor winter
conditioning phase to build strength and endurance for the upcoming spring “sprint” season. The
sprint season consisted of dual and regatta races held on straight, 2,000-meter courses. Lanes were
demarcated with buoys so that crew boats could race alongside one another. Large events used a
“heat” system in which the top one or two boats from each heat advanced to the next round of
competition. Because these races were so closely contested, even seemingly small factors could
separate the winners from the losers.
The Elements of Success
Successful racing in crew required a unique combination of individual skills and team
coordination. In an effort to learn more about these components, the U.S. Olympic Committee had
sponsored a research project in which dozens of crew coaches indicated which dimensions they
thought were most important for achieving top performance. The survey asked coaches to indicate
the importance of over two hundred variables that were either directly or indirectly related to
“sweep” rowing, in which each crew member rowed a single oar. The sample of respondents
included coaches with a wide array of experience, ranging from novice coaches, with 1 to 2 years of
experience, and intermediate coaches, with 3 to 4 years of experience, to master coaches, with over 4
years of experience. The coaches’ responses revealed that the two hundred variables could be broken
into four distinct categories concerning issues of 1) strength and conditioning, 2) rowing technique, 3)
psychological dimensions, and 4) program organization. Interestingly, the importance assigned to
these categories varied with the coaches’ level of experience. One pattern was that novice and
intermediate coaches tended to rate a multitude of variables (often as many as one hundred) as
highly important, whereas master coaches focused on a smaller set of variables, ranging from 11 to
20. Moreover, novice coaches tended to focus on technique, while intermediate coaches concentrated
on conditioning, and master coaches—those who were most experienced and successful—tended to
spotlight psychological variables as the most important ingredients of a successful crew.
Individual strength and endurance
The eight individual athletes in each crew boat needed
extreme strength and endurance to have any hope of performing reasonably well. Coaches used a
relatively easy and objective process to measure the athletes’ individual strength and conditioning.
The rowing “Ergometer” (or “erg” for short) objectively measured work output over a given distance
or period of time for each individual rower. This stable, land-based metric device, like the “rowing
1 See www.usrowing.org.
2 See www.usrowing.org.
2
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The Army Crew Team
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machines” found in most gyms, simulated the general rowing technique required to race on the
water, but eliminated the instability of rowing in a racing shell and isolated each crew member from
the other rowers in a boat. Rowers trained for endurance and technique on the “erg” and were
periodically tested year-round against one another and their own previous scores. Scores were
comparable across machines and years, making it easy to compare the current year’s average time to
last year’s, or to compare a time in Boston to a time on a different machine in Seattle, all with
precision to the tenth of one second over a 2,000 meter test.
Weight lifting exercises complemented the erg training. Records for the number of repetitions
and the amount of weight lifted in various exercises, including leg and bench presses, curls, and
squats, provided the coach with objective measures of strength and progress for the individuals over
time. Both the erg and weight records provided objective and comparable measures of strength and
endurance capabilities to assist the coach in evaluating the individual skills of the crew members.
Teamwork As important as individual skills were, it was crucial for the eight individual
athletes to synchronize their rowing. Crew was one of the few sports in which there were no awards
for individual performance, such as a “most valuable player.” Indeed, if one member of the crew
suddenly tried to out-perform his teammates in a race, the shell would actually slow down because
the rowers would no longer be synchronized. In addition, a key consideration was the mental
strength of the crew members, who had to be single-mindedly attuned to one another with the
common goal of crossing the finish line ahead of all other crews.
John Smith, a crew coach writing in the late 1800s, noted that “rowing is about the minutiae,”3 and
teams ever since have continued to struggle to master the details of rowing. When observing a good
crew, all eight rowers’ hands, arms, backs, and legs appeared to move as if there were steel-bar
connections linking them together. The timing of each oar’s entry and release from the water had to
occur within hundredths of a second of the other oars, which in turn required each rower to hold his
hands at precisely the same height. Moreover, for the entry and release to be perfectly timed, all
rowers had to drive their oar through the water at an identical pace. During the recovery phase of
the rowing stroke, all oars had to move in unison while remaining above the water, lest they touch
the water and slow the boat down. If any part of this rowing movement or oar blade-work was off,
the boat would lose its center balance and decelerate. Because the boat’s center of gravity was above
the water line, a rower who simply tossed his head to flick the hair out of his eyes during the
recovery phase of a stroke would cause the shell to tip to one side and his oars to hit the water.
Although a team member generally could not attribute a deviation in another’s technique or exertion
level during race day to any single individual, the remaining rowers could feel the deviation
instantly.
One long-time rower described the difficulty of staying synchronized:
I love the challenge, physical, mental, and even technical, in terms of body positioning,
timing, when body parts move, keeping the boat set, determining when the blade goes in and
comes out, how high out of water, where your hands are, how you feather the oar with one
hand and pull with the other. And after you drive, after you take the stroke with all your
power, you have to shift to nice and easy for the back-up slide. Think of it this way – it’s the
3 Bourne, Gilbert. A Textbook of Oarsmanship. (1987; original printing 1925). Sport Book Publishing.
3
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The Army Crew Team
equivalent of eight guys all trying to do the perfect golf swing at the same time, all together,
200 times in a row.4
Since every movement for every stroke of a 200-stroke race (2,000 meters) had to be in perfect
synchrony, an 8-person racing crew confronted 1,600 opportunities (8 people x 200 strokes) to upset
the balance of the boat. Naturally, it was nearly impossible for each person to row 200 perfect
strokes. The best boats were often distinguished, therefore, by how well the rowers adapted to one
another’s imperfect strokes. When one rower made an error, it was important for the other rowers
who felt the result of that error to refrain from adjusting their technique to compensate, because this
reaction could set in motion a spiral of asynchronous, unstable rowing. Instead, the best response
was to trust that whoever made the error would correct his next stroke, allowing the boat to regain
balance and maximum speed.
The trust required among team members spoke to the psychology of the team as a whole. Because
each member contributed to the team effort of rowing, a crew boat was only as strong as its weakest
link. When one member deviated from the group’s pace, this frequently had a cascading effect that
threw off the movements of the remaining members. This maxim of the “weakest link” applied not
just to rowing technique, but also to an individual’s threshold for physical failure. At some point,
rowers confronted the exhaustion of participating in a long race, which could make it feel impossible
to keep up the team’s unrelenting pace. If one member reached his threshold and tried to rest for
even one stroke, the team’s momentum was broken. The loss of one rower’s power for just one
stroke produced an increased load on the oars of the seven remaining rowers. If one of the remaining
seven was near his threshold of physical failure, even a slight increase in the load on his oar
substantially increased his chances of failure. Consequently, if one rower relented near the end of a
race, it could have a domino-like effect on the performance of the other rowers. Winning a crew race,
therefore, required rowers to fight against reaching their physical threshold while making the fewest
technical mistakes on any stroke.
In reality, synchrony was often imperfect. Coach P. explained:
Any slight change in the racing shell affects the whole boat. Often, when one person
changes, the seven other people try to respond in different ways. It is important not to
respond. Instead, teammates need to trust each other, to trust that the person out of rhythm
will correct himself. You need to trust that none in the crew will be the weakest link of that
crew, and that instead the weakest link will be found in the competitor’s boat.
In a crew boat with perfect coordination, rowing could feel almost effortless due to the synergy
among the eight members. In fact, Coach P. occasionally drilled the team members in practice by
asking them to row with their eyes closed, in order to help the team learn to “feel” this coordination,
referred to as “swing.” He explained: “The drill helped them to experience themselves along with
the rest of the team as a single unit, rather than as a collection of individuals. Swing is akin to a
runner’s high or being ‘in the zone’ where every stroke feels like one effortless activity after
another—a rower’s paradise.”
4 Thomas, Jack, “Different Strokes,” The Boston Globe, September 9, 2003, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles
/2003/09/30/different_strokes (accessed September 30, 2003).
4
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The Army Crew Team
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The 2001–2002 Army Crew Team
Coach P. looked forward to the start of the 2001-2002 spring season for Army Crew. The 20002001 team had achieved excellent performance during the previous spring, and most of the members
were returning for another season. They had worked hard in the fall and winter to improve their
individual skills, and this work had paid off. One of the coach’s first jobs was to select the top eight
rowers for the Varsity boat and place the bottom eight rowers into the Junior Varsity boat. These two
boats raced against different levels of competition throughout the season, although they competed
against each other directly in practice and indirectly by comparing their race times. As he did every
year, Coach P. began the season by conducting a series of exercises to determine assignments to the
Varsity and Junior Varsity boats.
The first set of exercises measured individual rowing skill. These objective measures included
individual strength, technique, and endurance using the ergometer machine. Coach P. was pleased
to note that the 2001-2002 team average had improved compared to the previous year by 10 seconds
on the erg over a 2,000-meter trial. In context, the Army Crew’s average time of 6:32 compared with
an approximate average of 6:20 for the Ivy League, and 5:55 for the U.S. Olympic team. Coach P. had
the crew members’ individual ergometer results in hand when the team headed to Atlanta for an
intensive week of training.
The Atlanta Retreat
As the weather improved, it was time to begin the spring racing season in earnest. The rowers
were anxious to get started after spending the winter in off-season training. Spring break served as a
kick-off, with a week off-site rowing “retreat” that the team spent training together at the former 1996
Olympic rowing venue in Atlanta. There, the rowers used their mornings to row in randomly
selected boats to focus on technique and adaptability. At night, the rowers read rowing biographies
and related materials. Afternoons, however, were the most intense part of the day. It was during this
time each day that Coach P. conducted a series of “seat races” that would ultimately determine which
rowers were selected for the Varsity boat.
“Seat racing” provided systematic data about how well each rower used his individual skills
while coordinating with his teammates in a shell on the water. The seat racing system was used
widely, including in the Olympic selection process, because coaches believed that it objectively
captured an individual’s ability to contribute to the team’s performance. First, eight rowers of about
equal strength were divided arbitrarily into two 4-person boats, which then raced against each other
for two minutes on calm water. If boat “A” beat boat “B” by 10 meters, this was recorded.
Immediately after the race, one member of each boat was told to switch boats, and the two boats
proceeded to row another two minute race. If boat “B” beat boat “A” by 15 meters in the second race,
it was recorded that rower “X” (originally in boat A) was 25 meters better than rower “Y” with whom
he had switched. Thus, the difference in results between the two boats across the two races could be
attributed to the two rowers who had switched boats. Because no one knew when they would be
switched, each individual was motivated to perform his best in each trial of the seat race. The coach
collected data over the course of multiple races with every possible combination of rowers in each
boat. Races that ended with close or surprising results were often re-run to confirm the result.
Although the racing times measured the performance of the whole 4-person boat, the systematic
comparison of many trials with many combinations allowed Coach P. to calibrate each individual
member’s relative capabilities and, consequently, to rank the rowers from top to bottom.
By the end of the week in Atlanta, Coach P. had selected the top eight rowers for the Varsity boat
and the bottom eight rowers for the Junior Varsity boat. He recalled that it was an easy decision:
5
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The Army Crew Team
The seat racing made it clear who the right eight guys were for the Varsity boat. The
Varsity team had the top eight scores for individual strength, with two exceptions. The two
guys with the greatest sheer strength were placed into the JV boat due to their performance in
the seat races. One of them tended to focus on his individual performance, but brought his 4person team down in the competitions. He did not appear to give his personal best on the
water, and yet he was critical of others. He would row hard but throw out technique in
competition, thus slowing the shell down. The other rower was young, inexperienced and had
very poor technique on the water where it mattered. Both of these rowers lost their seat-race
competitions.
For the last practice of the week, the two newly-selected teams raced for the first time, and, as
expected, the Varsity boat defeated the JV boat handily. The Varsity boat experienced “swing”
almost immediately, and the rowers were excited about their first experience together as the Varsity
team.
Back on the Hudson River
When the team arrived back at campus, Coach P. found that some of the Varsity boat members
appeared unhappy and critical of one another about why they had not defeated the JV boat by a
greater margin in Atlanta, just five days prior. He took it as a good sign: “I thought this was an
indicator of their striving for excellence. In retrospect, it should have been seen as an omen of the
hard times awaiting me.”
As far as Coach P. was concerned, his Varsity boat consisted of the eight objectively best rowers,
and he expected them to perform well together. In other years, and based on his knowledge of other
teams, the Varsity boat was almost always faster than the JV boat, both in practices and in real race
times. This was only natural, as the best eight rowers were in the Varsity boat. Their victory over the
JV in their first effort confirmed the objective selection methodology—clearly. Or did it?
During the team’s first practice on the Hudson River after Spring Break, the JV boat immediately
beat the Varsity boat in a practice race. Coach P. viewed this result as an aberration. When it
happened a few more times, however, it became more puzzling to him. Soon a clear pattern
emerged. To his continuing surprise, Coach P. found that the Junior Varsity rowed faster than the
Varsity team about two-thirds of the time. And it wasn’t that the JV was getting faster; the Varsity
appeared to be slowing down. Given the meticulous attention he had devoted to placing individuals
in the boats, and the clear-cut objective performance data on which he had based these placement
decisions, he had no indication in advance that this would happen.
Coach P. was perplexed by this turn of events, and began an ongoing, painstaking, daily analysis
of the potential factors that could be causing this pattern of results. His first actions were aimed at
gathering various types of information and performing experiments to try to isolate the specific
reason why the Junior Varsity outperformed the Varsity boat. For example, he conducted a series of
pair-wise races in which two members of the Varsity boat raced against the corresponding pair from
the JV boat. Regardless of which two members he put together, the pair from the Varsity boat
consistently beat the JV pair. He then conducted another series of races in which various groupings
of four or six rowers from the Varsity boat raced against their counterparts from the JV boat. Again,
the Varsity rowers consistently won these races. Only when all eight rowed at the same time did the
JV beat the Varsity. These results again indicated to Coach P. that the Varsity boat did have the better
individual members, but that there was something about the way they functioned as a team of eight
rowers that made “the whole less than the sum of the parts.”
6
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The Army Crew Team
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Turning to the hard data he had collected on the team members, Coach P. constructed a matrix of
the 16 rowers, listing their strengths and weaknesses on various dimensions. These dimensions
included erg scores, weight lifting strength, rowing technique, and whether the person was a “leader
or follower,” “optimist or pessimist,” “team builder or team disrupter (i.e., someone who consistently
talked during practice or criticized others),” and related factors. Each person’s scores on the more
subjective criteria were based on the Coach’s direct observation along with comments that the rowers
made to him. His assistant coach also provided ratings for the subjective items. Coach P. and his
assistant had almost identical views on these subjective measures. The pattern that emerged from
examining this matrix was that the Varsity boat’s members had the best technical skill and
conditioning among the 16 rowers, but no one was classified as a leader while several were labeled as
team disrupters. The JV boat’s members, in contrast, had virtually no team disrupters.
Coach P. was aware of the Olympic study emphasizing the importance of psychological factors.
Moreover, he was comfortable analyzing these dimensions based on his advanced degrees in
psychology, his Ph.D. in higher education, and his experience as a tenured professor in the
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point. In addition to relying on his own
judgment as an experienced coach, he brought in a person from the Center for Enhanced Performance
(CEP) at West Point who had expertise in maximizing individual and team performance. The CEP
was comprised of the Academy’s sports psychologists, who were trained to develop the systematic
application of specific mental skills necessary to improve human performance. They employed a
series of training techniques designed to utilize the “beliefs, attitudes, and thinking habits that help
develop the confidence, concentration and motivation needed to achieve one’s full potential.”
Although the JV crew team seemed to embrace this CEP training, Coach P. was concerned about how
it was received by the skeptical Varsity members, who labeled it as “touchy-feely.”
Coach P. routinely encouraged his rowers to email one another with the goal of mutually
supporting one another’s efforts toward developing a winning mentality. He also asked that any
criticisms or suggestions for improvement be directed only towards him. A sample from the email
messages circulating among the JV boat read: “…everyone has rowed enough races to know you win
some, you lose some … Just remember, everyone on the [JV] Crew wants to win as much as you do
… only those who are serious rowers and want to row hard (are among us).” Another read: “We
have the confidence and the control to row our own race. We know how to win and we will do it on
our terms. We will succeed together, we will fail together.” And yet another: “We are not rowing for
ourselves, Coach, or Army Crew. When push comes to shove, in that last 1,000 meters, we’re rowing
for every guy in that boat because we don’t want to let him down.”
In contrast, a sample from the Varsity Boat’s email messages read: “I never thought I would be the
weak link, but on this race, I am sure of it. I know if I get my head back in it, the boat will start to
move again.” Many of the Varsity rowers wrote directly to the Coach with their complaints. A
representative email, though hardly the only example of finger-pointing, read as follows: “Now . . .
my bitching session about Jim since I haven't gotten a chance to talk with you. Besides his "great
personality" (which I won't even get into) he is not consistent at all and I don't know if you can tell
this from outside the boat. It doesn't seem like he listens to the coxswain very well and he doesn't
listen to me either. I really need someone that I feel a bond with and it isn't happening with Jim. At
points I have almost asked you to move me to any boat but the one that he is in. I know and try to
remember the story that you always tell about the guy that decked the other guy at the season’s end,
but I seriously don't think that I can hold out that long. He gets on my nerves so bad (which is odd
cause I really get along with everyone) and I think everyone is starting to notice what an ass he’s
making out of himself and asking why he is sitting in that seat. I'm very sorry if it seems like I’m
trying to get you to change something that you don’t want to (because you are the coach) but I’m just
7
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The Army Crew Team
trying to give you perspective from my seat.” Among all the emails Coach P. received like this one,
no clear pattern emerged that pointed to a lone culprit among the Varsity members.
Coach P. also considered whether to attribute the puzzling turn of events to the rivalry between
the two boats. At one point during a CEP team-building session, the Varsity team members had
accused him of creating a rift between them and the JV boat by forcing them to row against each
other at practice so often. The Varsity preferred to row alone and apart from the JV. One member
suggested that the competition that the Coach set up between the Varsity and Junior Varsity boats
was unnerving. Whereas the Junior Varsity boat had nothing to lose, it was embarrassing for the
Varsity boat to compete against them. Another team member, however, argued that it was too
difficult to compete on the river while rowing only against the clock, because the other team
provided a useful benchmark to gauge how fast they were rowing.
Some comments were also directed toward internal comparisons among the members of the
Varsity boat. For example, one rower who was in his second year attributed his own low
performance to being the most junior member of the team. He felt he was ineffective in influencing
the more senior members of the team who outranked him militarily.
Before the two boats raced against each other at practices, the members of each boat met in a
huddle, put their hands together and shouted parting words from their huddle. From early on, the
JV boat always parted by shouting the words “nothing to lose.” In contrast, the Varsity boat
intermittently changed the words they used, tending to focus their slogan on the specifics of rowing
itself. For example, they parted with shouts of “row hard,” “never die,” and “finish clean.”
After every practice and race, the crews put away the equipment and conducted a self-critique.
Coach P. noticed that members of the Varsity boat tended to critique each other individually on the
details of the practice or race. They could be merciless in their assessment of one another’s
performance. In contrast, the JV boat’s members did not criticize one another individually. If
corrections were needed, they never singled out a single rower but, instead, made global comments
about details that everyone needed to practice.
Coach P. had taken a somewhat risky approach to the team’s conditioning activities during the
winter and spring season. Noting that the team’s overall erg scores were so much better than the
previous year (which had been a successful winning season), he believed this year’s crews could
make it to the finals of the Nationals. Given that belief, he wanted to ensure they had every possible
chance to accomplish this goal. Accordingly, he met with the football team’s strength and
conditioning coach, nick-named “Satan” for his hellish weight room workouts.
Coach P. told the team that he and Satan had worked out a conditioning plan that would ensure
they would be at their peak strength and endurance during the week of the National competition.
This plan required them to continue significant weight workouts throughout the normal racing
season. Coach P. told the crew that this might slow them down significantly during the dual racing
season, as well as during the League and New York State Championships. However, with weight
lifting curtailed approximately 14 days prior to the Nationals, they could expect that the 14-day rest
from lifting would allow the muscles to heal, grow and be ready for maximum performance. He
described this as a sort of “sling-shot” effect of increased individual power that would be seen at the
most critical point in the season—the Nationals. In fact, the members of both the Varsity and JV were
getting progressively stronger and their erg times were improving during the course of the season.
However, the Varsity was losing at the dual meets and finishing near the middle of the pack in larger
events while the JV was routinely winning against their competition.
8
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The Army Crew Team
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As the season proceeded and they crept closer to the National competition, the JV members were
far more excited about their season than were the Varsity members. This disparity may have affected
one final experiment Coach P. conducted by moving some JV rowers into the Varsity boat on
occasion during practices. This inevitably led to worse results. In the beginning of the season, the JV
members would have found it more prestigious to join the Varsity boat. Now, however, the JV
wanted nothing to do with the Varsity rower who was “sent down” and the JV rower wanted to stay
with the winning JV boat with little desire to “move up” to the losing Varsity. In fact, when switches
were made, the JV would win by even more, indicating the rower “sent down” made the JV boat go
faster than before. If the rower “sent down” was indeed better than the one moved up to the Varsity,
however (again confirming the initial placement), this defeated the purpose of trying to improve the
Varsity boat by switching members with the JV! Coach P. remained confident of the potential for the
Varsity boat, but he increasingly questioned whether or not that potential would be realized this
season.
What to do?
Switch the Varsity and Junior Varsity boats The most extreme option that Coach P.
considered was to acknowledge that the Junior Varsity boat was a stronger performer than the
Varsity boat and simply switch their titles. He was reluctant to do this, however. After all, the data
he collected both before and after the boat assignments strongly indicated that the Varsity boat had
the strongest rowers. On the other hand, there was a precedent for switching boats. During the mid1990s, the Cornell Coach faced a similar situation, made the switch, and both the Varsity and JV won
Eastern Championships that year.
Switch individual boat members Another option that Coach P. continued to consider was
to switch individual members between the two boats. Perhaps he still had not found the right
combination for the Varsity boat, despite all his efforts to do so. The viability of this option was
somewhat limited by the Junior Varsity members’ preferences to remain in the JV boat. Some of them
had even expressed dread toward switching places.
Intervene to improve the Varsity boat’s performance Given that the Varsity boat
contained the strongest rowers, Coach P. ruminated about how he might intervene to improve their
performance. Toward this end, he decided to begin the team’s final week of practice by meeting with
the Varsity boat’s members to discuss their performance.
The Group Meeting
With the National championship races just four days away, Monday’s practice ended with the JV
yet again whipping the Varsity. The JV left the Hudson River exuberantly, cheered their “nothing to
lose” slogan, and left the practice area. Coach P. held the Varsity boat on the water, pulled his
coaching launch alongside, and looked into the eyes of every rower. The coxswain’s head was down
and shaking left to right. He saw no pain in their eyes that would have reflected the agony of a
physical loss to the JV. Rather, he saw crushed spirits with hollow stares. The rowers muttered
quiet, unemotional expletives. Coach P. ordered them to “put it on the dock—we’ll meet at the picnic
table.”
Coach P. waited at the picnic table to observe his Varsity rowers wander over to the table. The
crew wouldn’t even sit near each other. Some knelt on the grass, others stood, one laid flat, and the
others took the four ends of the table as far apart as they could get. No one talked. The Nationals
were exactly four days away. Coach P. stated his confidence in them, but expressed his own
9
This document is authorized for use only by Charlie Phinney in BEM 211-AB (Organizational Behavior) (F23) taught by JOHN SUMANTH, Wake Forest University from Aug 2023 to Dec 2023.
For the exclusive use of C. Phinney, 2023.
403-131
The Army Crew Team
frustration in failing to understand why they weren’t winning. He laid out the logical arguments of
using objective measurement and selection criteria. He ended by stating that the answer was held
within them as a team and that no one would leave until a solution was proposed or issues were
identified for resolution.
The first few forced explanations focused on the team’s general situation rather than on any
particular members of the team. The tone changed, however, when Joe, the most junior member got
his turn to speak. Joe stood up, stalked several steps away from the rest of the team, and wheeled
around to confront them all. “I’ve been carrying this boat alone,” he said angrily, “I am the only guy
working hard on every stroke. I feel I’m out there rowing alone.” He argued that his teammates
should look to themselves for the explanation for their poor performance.
Other team members quickly countered Joe’s claims. “I’m the one carrying the boat,” said another
rower. Two others contended that they were not slacking off, but instead were working as hard as
they possibly could. After several angry accusations and defensive outbursts, one of the men
summed up something they were all feeling: he was sick of the situation and couldn’t wait for the
season to be over.
Coach P. was surprised by how the discussion had escalated. He saw his best eight rowers
dejected, angry, and clenching their fists. He asked the group, “So, what is the solution?” All eight
rowers met his question with dead silence. After an increasingly tense stretch of silence, Coach P.
told them that the meeting had given him a lot to think about, and that they should report back to
practice the next day ready to work through this situation.
When he finished speaking, Coach P. watched the eight teammates walk away from each other in
eight different directions. After letting them disperse, the walk back to his office seemed longer than
usual. He felt weighed down by the immediate prospect of his Varsity team falling apart, and he
knew he had a long night of thinking ahead of him about what to do.
10
This document is authorized for use only by Charlie Phinney in BEM 211-AB (Organizational Behavior) (F23) taught by JOHN SUMANTH, Wake Forest University from Aug 2023 to Dec 2023.
For the exclusive use of C. Phinney, 2023.
The Army Crew Team
Exhibit 1
Seats
403-131
Placement of Rowers in a Crew Boat
Description
1 and 2
Bow seats. “Place kickers” who are removed from the action. Described
as “self-motivated” and “loners.” They rarely speak.
3 and 4
Similar to 5 and 6 but better technique, less strength. Good transition to
the bow pair. With 5 and 6, they comprise the “Engine Room” for the boat.
5 and 6
Strongest members with generally poorer technique. The team captain
sits in the 6 seat.
7
Good follower of 8, almost a perfect pair with him. 7 leads the starboard
side of the boat.
8
Stroke seat. Crucial for setting the rhythm. Not as strong, but most
consistent with solid technique. Should possess a “never quit” attitude.
Source: Created by casewriter.
Coxswain: Steers the boat, motivates the team, and sets the racing strategy. Executes the coach’s
training plan for the day and corrects rowing technique when the coach is not present and during
races. Appointed leader responsible for the boat when under way, generally blends into the
background off the water. Reports issues to the Coach as appropriate.
11
This document is authorized for use only by Charlie Phinney in BEM 211-AB (Organizational Behavior) (F23) taught by JOHN SUMANTH, Wake Forest University from Aug 2023 to Dec 2023.